Astringent and mouth-drying, a burst of alcohol and wood introduces a cutting bitterness that is too much for the sweetness to handle – enjoyable bourbon with great mixing potential, not much of a virgin with its dominating bite!… behave

Tasting notes:

Virgin bourbon is produced by the Heaven Hill distillery mainly for markets outside the United States, but a careful internet search reveals that this is available in parts of the USA for about $12. It sells in Australia for about $42, at Liquorland in fact.

Nose: Big chocolate, corn and raisin notes waft up with flecks of grain that dance around layers of caramel and wet dough. That wet dough character begins to dominate as the whiskey rests in the glass. flattening out the experience with some vanilla.

Taste: Skewed to the bitter woody side initially with mouth-drying astringency, some sweetness develops in the form of syrup and sultana but the alcohol and oak is simply too much for it to handle. There is an off note here, quite pronounced, that nags the palate – enough already! It is astringent, alcoholic, woody, and almost too spicy. The sweetness is there, but hard to identify – a $12 bourbon, eh? Makes sense now.